Sender (2026)

This is either one of the best films of the year or one of the worst. I'm not sure which it is. Odds are you may not know either. 

The basic plot of the film has a woman getting mysterious packages from an unknown person, sent to her by an Amazon like company. The items are some times personal and sometimes not. The woman then tries to find out who is doing it and why

The trick with the film it's very much a form over content sort of thing. Deliberately told, with the director Russell Goldman in absolute control of every thing on screen, this is a film you either give yourself over to or go mad. Goldman clearly knows what is what and how to tell the story his way (he's a hell of a director) but at the same time I'm not sure we are told enough. Watching the film I kept thinking that there was something I wasn't catching because I wasn't being given all the clues, or details or something (why is the woman punching that box open?). 

To be honest the clues maybe there, but at the same time I was too busy watching the way Goldman put the film together.His construction of sequences is almosy pathological. For example the opening title sequence is seen from the perspective of a box on a trip, and the POV never shifts the frame is always exactly precisely the same all the way through. I stopped taking notes early because I was so lost in the craft.

And I'm not sure thats a good thing. I was too busy watching shot choices that I may have lost the plot, literally.

I'm intrigued enough, that some where down the road, away from the festival waves I'm stuck in, I'll give it ago. TO be honest I'm not sure I should review the film until I see it again, but then again this is exactly the sort of off the beaten trail film that regular readers of Unseen Film want to see, if for no other reason than its not like any other film

Recommended for the adventurous.